Winston Churchill as a writer

Churchill received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 "for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values".

His annual pay was £300, and he calculated he needed an additional £500 to support a style of life equal to that of other officers of the regiment.

[8][6] In 1899 Churchill resigned his commission and travelled to South Africa as the correspondent with The Morning Post, on a salary of £250 a month plus all expenses, to report on the Second Boer War.

The book was well-received, although the former Prime Minister Arthur Balfour dismissed the work as "Winston's brilliant autobiography, disguised as world history".

[19] In 1953, Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for his brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values".

[23] Blackwood considered Diston a 'splendid journalist' and his first article written for Churchill went to print without change—this, according to David Lough, "was the start of a partnership that would flourish for the rest of the decade".

[23] By the end of the following year, Diston had already prepared most of Churchill's 'The Great Men I Have Known' series for the News of the World in Britain and Collier's in the US, due to appear from January 1936.

Sir Emsley Carr, the British newspaper's chairman, enjoyed them so much he immediately signed up Churchill for a series in 1937.

He wrote to his American counterpart about the confusion their names were causing among their readers, offering to sign his own works "Winston Spencer Churchill", adding the first half of his double-barrelled surname, Spencer-Churchill, which he did not otherwise use.

The two men met on occasions when one of them happened to be in the other's country, but their diametrically opposed personalities prevented the development of a close friendship.

Churchill at his desk in 1940
Churchill, age 21, as a cornet in the 4th Queen's Own Hussars in 1895
A man working at a desk looks toward the camera; he wears the uniform of a British army officer
Randolph Churchill , Winston's son, who edited the published collections of his father's speeches; photographed by Cecil Beaton during the Second World War.
Cover of The River War , 1899, showing the original form of his pen name
Three-quarter length photograph of Churchill staring into the camera
Churchill in Canada in December 1941
Statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square, London
Title page of the 1900 edition of Savrola
Churchill addressing merchant ships' crews and dockers at Liverpool, April 1941
Churchill at a BBC microphone about to broadcast to the nation on the afternoon of VE Day, 8 May 1945.
Churchill in mid-speech, his tight hand held in rhetorical pose
Churchill during the 1945 General Election
Churchill, wearing a hat and smoking a cigar, holds a submachine gun
Churchill inspects a ' Tommy gun ' while visiting coastal defence positions near Hartlepool on 31 July 1940.